Development of Scale to Assess Buffalo Owners' Attitude Towards the Integrated Murrah Development Scheme

The present study was undertaken to develop a reliable and valid scale for assessing the attitudes of buffalo owners towards the Integrated Murrah Development Scheme (IMDS) in Haryana. Thurstone's Equal-Appearing Interval technique was employed for the construction of the attitude scale. An initial pool of 100 attitude statements was generated through literature review, expert consultation, and field experience. These statements were evaluated by 100 subject matter specialists, resulting in the retention of 50 statements as judged by 60 experts, while the remaining 50 were discarded due to ambiguity or unsuitability. From the retained pool, 25 statements were selected, and their scale (S) and Interquartile range (Q) values were worked out. Item analysis using item—total correlation further confirmed the discriminatory power of the selected items. Eventually, 25 statements were finalized for the attitude scale. The developed scale exhibited high reliability (Cronbach's Alpha = 0.84) and strong content validity, thereby establishing it as a robust instrument for future research and policy evaluation related to buffalo development programs.